Washington has, in all likelihood, punched their ticket. If there is a scenario where Washington doesn’t make the playoff, it involves something extraordinarily unpredictable from the committee. Is Washington among the country’s four best teams? No. But they did the job in front of them, and last night they did it admirably, responding to Oregon’s best punch with some of their best execution since the last time they played Oregon.
The ripple effects from the game are massive. Washington gets its second playoff berth before Oregon gets its second. Michigan, Georgia, and Alabama all just saw their national championship probabilities rise by having Oregon out of the field. Thinking in Heisman betting markets is that Jayden Daniels won the award, Bo Nix’s best–playoff–QB argument crumbling because he is not a playoff QB.
Those Heisman markets are fickle, though, and Washington is in a similar place to TCU last year in how big an underdog they’ll be. TCU famously won a playoff game, even if they more famously lost to Georgia by more than a handful of points. For all the lamentations that “college football should be played on the field, not on spreadsheets,” Washington’s victory and the corresponding consequences are a firm reminder that the season does take place on the field. The strawman is defeated. There was always a path to the four-team playoff for every FBS team. For some teams, that path took multiple seasons of proving themselves and a lot of luck in the end, but the path existed. Washington’s turned out to involve narrowly surviving Arizona State and Washington State and other, better teams before toppling Oregon for the second time this year.
I was confused about Dan Lanning’s options on the final holding call. Did he give up 40 seconds by accepting the penalty, or would the clock have run had he let the game proceed to second down? There are a lot of rules in football, and I do not understand them all. More than that decision, though, the game came down to Washington’s offensive line bullying Oregon’s front seven, and to Oregon failing to get its offense going in the Pac-12 Championship’s opening moments. Oregon was the better team than Washington this year. Washington beat Oregon twice.
Now, on the heels of that loud reminder that upsets happen in college football, we have four strange championship games ahead, two featuring overwhelming favorites, one featuring arguably the two best teams in the country, and one featuring a team much like Washington playing a team much worse than Oregon, and possibly starting its third-string quarterback as it takes on that challenge.
With four Power Five championships remaining, we have 16 possible combinations for how the games will go. Let’s talk scenarios.
How We’re Doing This
Our college football model has its latest playoff probabilities, and it’s running the same way it’s run all year. Given our awareness of some of its shortcomings, though, we’ve run it in a slightly different way here. Instead of using Movelor, our model’s own rating system, to determine the win probabilities in each game, we’ve used betting spreads. We’ve also split the difference between two possible interpretations of the committee’s impression of Georgia, telling our model the committee is still higher on the Dawgs than precedent would suggest but telling our model the committee is only half as high as they demonstrated they were before Georgia beat Mississippi.
The Scenarios
1. Texas, Georgia, Florida State, & Michigan Win (26.3% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 96%
- Florida State: 96%
- Texas: 6%
- Ohio State: 2%
Could Texas or Ohio State really make it if all favorites win? It’s doubtful. That’s why the probability’s so low in our model’s eyes. If Florida State really struggles to get past Louisville and Texas pastes Oklahoma State, then maybe, but that still leaves Ohio State as an oddity. This is more a calibration problem with our model than a real chance for the Buckeyes.
2. Texas, Georgia, Louisville, & Michigan Win (22.7% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Texas: 65%
- Ohio State: 35%
Would Ohio State really have a chance here? Again, it’s doubtful. But we don’t really know how far ahead of Texas the Buckeyes were in this week’s rankings, and there are injury scenarios or scenarios where the Longhorns only barely scoot by. There would be a lot of Texas vs. Ohio State debate in the leadup to the selection show, but ultimately, the committee would probably choose Texas. As our model indicates.
3. Texas, Alabama, Florida State, & Michigan Win (15.8% Likely)
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 95%
- Florida State: 94%
- Alabama: 44%
- Texas: 36%
- Georgia: 27%
- Ohio State: 4%
Doomsday. We’ve talked about this at length, but this is the scenario the committee wants to avoid. It would be easiest to leave out Georgia, but it would not be easy to leave out one of Florida State, Alabama, and Texas. Our model does not know about Jordan Travis’s injury, nor does it know about Tate Rodemaker’s injury, so take FSU’s probability with the appropriate grains of salt. This is one where we really don’t know what the committee would do. It would be faced with a highly subjective choice.
4. Texas, Alabama, Louisville, & Michigan Win (13.8% Likely)
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 99%
- Texas: 70%
- Alabama: 67%
- Georgia: 50%
- Ohio State: 14%
This would make for an interesting debate, and by precedent—our model’s guiding light—we’d expect Georgia to have a solid case, but not solid enough to jump Texas and Alabama. This one would appear very straightforward.
5. Oklahoma State, Georgia, Florida State, & Michigan Win (5.0% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 99%
- Florida State: 98%
- Ohio State: 3%
This one is easy. In fact, Texas losing generally makes for an easy situation.
6. Oklahoma State, Georgia, Louisville, & Michigan Win (3.9% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Ohio State: 99%
- Florida State: 1%
This is Ohio State’s dream. Don’t worry too much about FSU’s 1% chance here. That’s only coming in a sample size of 388 simulations of this set of results, and it’s mostly a reflection that sure, theoretically the committee could like a 12–1 team more than an 11–1 team, given both played in power conferences. This is not the 1-of-100 year that’s the case with this specific matchup.
7. Oklahoma State, Alabama, Florida State, & Michigan Win (3.2% Likely)
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Florida State: 98%
- Georgia: 47%
- Alabama: 44%
- Ohio State: 10%
We really doubt our model’s assessment of Georgia and Alabama here, but that probably makes now a good time to point out that head-to-head results are poised to matter more this year than they ever have before. That isn’t thanks to some choice by the committee. It’s circumstance. Strange, strange circumstance.
8. Oklahoma State, Alabama, Louisville, & Michigan Win (2.4% Likely)
- Michigan: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Georgia: 82%
- Alabama: 75%
- Ohio State: 43%
Georgia vs. Ohio State would be an interesting debate here, but we’d probably have Georgia going to the Rose Bowl to play Michigan and Alabama welcoming Washington to SEC Country in the Sugar Bowl. Objectively, a Georgia vs. Alabama national championship matchup would be very funny. Not that it would necessarily happen—Michigan is probably the best team in the country right now—but it would be funny.
9. Texas, Georgia, Florida State, & Iowa Win (1.9% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Florida State: 100%
- Washington: 99%
- Texas: 81%
- Ohio State: 14%
- Michigan: 5%
We’re into the Iowa scenarios. One note with these: Similarly to the FSU 1% thing above, we’re dealing with very small samples, so the probabilities have a larger error margin than they do with the likelier scenarios above.
Now.
If Iowa beats Michigan, will anyone stump for the Big Ten the way Greg Sankey is preemptively stumping for the SEC?
10. Texas, Georgia, Louisville, & Iowa Win (1.7% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Texas: 96%
- Ohio State: 65%
- Michigan: 32%
- Florida State: 2%
Could Ohio State head-to-head vs. Michigan matter? Should it, if Michigan loses to Iowa? This is the head-to-head scenario we have not really hashed out.
11. Texas, Alabama, Florida State, & Iowa Win (1.3% Likely)
- Washington: 97%
- Florida State: 97%
- Alabama: 72%
- Texas: 69%
- Georgia: 54%
- Ohio State: 7%
- Michigan: 5%
An alternate version of Alabama vs. Texas vs. Georgia.
12. Texas, Alabama, Louisville, & Iowa Win (1.0% Likely)
- Washington: 99%
- Texas: 91%
- Alabama: 91%
- Georgia: 88%
- Ohio State: 22%
- Michigan: 9%
Again, we’re into small samples here. But would the committee politick and try to let one SEC team and one Big Ten team in?
13. Oklahoma State, Georgia, Florida State, & Iowa Win (0.4% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Florida State: 100%
- Ohio State: 64%
- Michigan: 33%
You may notice these don’t sum to 400%. Remember Oregon? In one of these 39 simulations, our model had Oregon slipping in.
14. Oklahoma State, Georgia, Louisville, & Iowa Win (0.3% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Ohio State: 91%
- Michigan: 79%
- Florida State: 6%
The two–Big–Ten–teams scenario you didn’t think of.
15. Oklahoma State, Alabama, Florida State, & Iowa Win (0.3% Likely)
- Washington: 100%
- Florida State: 100%
- Alabama: 80%
- Georgia: 76%
- Ohio State: 28%
- Michigan: 16%
Washington vs. Florida State: Who’s number 1? Does it matter at all?
16. Oklahoma State, Alabama, Louisville, & Iowa Win (0.2% Likely)
- Georgia: 100%
- Washington: 100%
- Alabama: 94%
- Michigan: 56%
- Ohio State: 50%
This would be one hell of a parlay.
